sheenaghpugh (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sheenaghpugh) wrote2014-12-06 10:09 am
sheenaghpugh) wrote2014-12-06 10:09 am
(no subject)
I hate the List Season. Best books of the year, favourite books of the year, call it what you will: it takes up pages of newspapers that would otherwise be devoted to book reviews and it's boringly predictable. Novelists recommend their besties and are in turn recommended by them. Critics recommend whatever is abstruse, unreadable and will make them look incredibly clever, not forgetting along the way to marvel at why this choice has not proved more popular with the general reader, otherwise known as you crowd of ignoramuses who aren't as discerning as Mr Critic. Celebs from other fields name whatever has won an award or been much talked about and is therefore a safe choice. Poets are seldom asked to take part at all, but those few who are asked take immense care not to name, at all costs, any book of poetry in their choices.
There are, of course, honourable exceptions in all fields - even the poetry field, where the much-sniped-at Andrew Motion, as usual, has been recommending poetry in order to rectify to some small extent its general neglect by the newspapers. Whatever one thinks of his own poetry, few living poets have done more to advance the genre as a whole, both via his marvellous creation of the Poetry Archive and, in a smaller but still important way, by actually using lists like these in a productive way.
There are, of course, honourable exceptions in all fields - even the poetry field, where the much-sniped-at Andrew Motion, as usual, has been recommending poetry in order to rectify to some small extent its general neglect by the newspapers. Whatever one thinks of his own poetry, few living poets have done more to advance the genre as a whole, both via his marvellous creation of the Poetry Archive and, in a smaller but still important way, by actually using lists like these in a productive way.